It seems that every Georgia

chief executive elected during the last quarter of a

century has wanted to be remembered as "the

education governor."

The trend started with

George Busbee in 1974 (who admittedly could not do a lot

that cost money during his first term because his

predecessor, Jimmy Carter, followed the great tradition

of many past Georgia governors and basically spent up all

the money in the state coffers, which forced Busbee to

concentrate on rebuilding the state reserve accounts.

It continued through the

administrations of Joe Frank Harris (who won

near-unanimous legislative passage for his much-heralded

Quality Basic Education program) and Zell Miller (who

found a new way to pay for all his new education spending

plans when he legalized gambling).

And, based on his campaign

rhetoric, it was expected to continue into the one-year

old term of Roy Barnes.

(It should be noted that

Gov. (or President, if you prefer to use the title of the

office he won after leaving Georgia with the reputation

of not being electable to any office, even dogcatcher!)

Carter did not concentrate on reforming education per se

because he was interested in frying bigger fish: He

championed a complex plan of total state government

reorganization - which, of course, included the

Department of Education.)

Now, the reason all these

men have sought to become closely identified with

educational reform (and presumably improvement) -

and the reason that even President Bill Clinton is

concentrating so much of his final budget proposal on

assisting public education with teacher salaries and

facilities improvement - is because education is

something which affects almost all Georgians and

Americans.

Thus, it was only a matter

of time before Gov. Barnes moved beyond solving metro

Atlanta's traffic congestion and pollution problems in

order to concentrate on the public schools.

And, he followed the same

path as his mentor, Gov. Harris (for whom he served as

state Senate Floor Leader) when he named a blue-ribbon

panel of business executives and community leaders to

come up with the final plan.

That plan - now under

consideration in the state House of Representatives

- would seem to have only one feature in it -

the abolition of teacher tenure - based on the

amount of criticism levelled against it by the teacher

unions.

While that is an emotional

issue which raises some serious questions for folks on

both of it, the teacher tenure question has served as a

"smokescreen" to cloud the proposal from Gov.

Barnes to totally revamp the funding formula for

education.

This is the area of the

plan - scattered in several places throughout that

250-page educational reform bill - which should be

of utmost concern to all of us taxpayers.

It is certainly the section

of the bill which concerns county school superintendents

and county school boards who are responsible for writing

budgets on which the schools operate.

In the richer counties like

those in suburban Atlanta, the equalization formulas mean

that their taxpayers will be picking up a larger share of

the total cost for all those grandiose school reforms,

like smaller classrooms and increased technology.

Unfortunately, the reverse

is not necessarily true: While the poor systems may get

marginally more funds, the stricter requirements of the

bill - and the much-publicized annual promises of

teacher raises - means that their total personnel

costs will go up dramatically more than whatever increase

in state funding they receive.

But, while funding formulas

are important, the ultimate goal of this bill - and

of all those previous educational reform efforts -

is to improve the end-products of our educational system.

That is a goal we will

never achieve completely but one toward which we must

always be striving.

[Lee N. Howell is an

award-winning writer who has been observing and

commenting upon politics and society in the Southern

Crescent, the state, and nation for more than a quarter

of a century.]